Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

by Margaret Thatcher

  The international reaction to American intervention was in general strongly adverse. It certainly gave a propaganda boost to the Soviet Union and the Cubans were portrayed as having played an heroic role in resisting the invasion. When I went to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in New Delhi the following month it was still Grenada which was the most controversial topic of discussion. My own public criticism of American action and refusal to become involved in it also led to temporarily bad relations with some of Britain’s long-standing friends in the Caribbean. It was an unhappy time.

  In Britain we had to face strong pressure, not least in the House of Commons, to renegotiate the arrangement for the deployment of Cruise missiles. The argument was that if the Americans had not consulted us about Grenada, why should they do so as regards the use of Cruise missiles.

  So when President Reagan telephoned me on the evening of Wednesday 26 October during an emergency House of Commons debate on the American action, I was not in the sunniest of moods. The President said he very much regretted the embarrassment that had been caused and wanted to explain how it had happened. It was the need to avoid leaks of what was intended which had been at the root of the problem. He had been woken at 3 o’clock in the morning with an urgent plea from the OECS. A group had then convened in Washington to study the matter and there was already fear of a leak. By the time he had received my message setting out my concerns the zero hour had passed and American forces were on their way. The military action had gone well and the aim was now to secure democracy.

  There was not much I felt able to say and so I more or less held my peace, but I was glad to have received the telephone call.

  Just as events in the Lebanon had affected American action in Grenada, so what I had seen in the crisis over Grenada affected my attitude to the Lebanon. I was concerned that American lack of consultation and unpredictability might be repeated there with very damaging consequences.

  Naturally, I understood that the United States wanted to strike back after the terrorist outrage against its servicemen in Beirut. But whatever military action now took place, I wanted it to be a lawful, measured and effective response. I sent a message to President Reagan on 4 November welcoming assurances which Geoffrey Howe had received from George Shultz that there would be no hasty reaction by the Americans in retaliation and urging that a more broadly based Lebanese Government be constructed. The President replied to me on 7 November, emphasizing that any action would be a matter of self-defence, not of revenge, but adding that those who committed the atrocity must not be allowed to strike again if it was possible to prevent them. A week later he sent me a further message saying that although he was inclined to take decisive but carefully limited military action, the US had reports of planning for other terrorist acts against the MNF and he intended to deter these. He added that, because of the need for absolute secrecy, knowledge of his current thinking was being severely limited within the US Government.

  I quickly replied. I said that I well understood all the pressures upon him to take action but any action must, in my view, be clearly limited to legitimate self-defence. It would be necessary to ensure the avoidance of civilian casualties and minimize the opportunities for hostile propaganda. I was glad that he did not envisage involving Israel or targeting Syria or Iran, action against either of which would be very dangerous. I did not believe that retaliatory action was advisable. However, in the end France did launch air strikes – at American urging, as President Mitterrand told me later. And in response to attacks on its aircraft, the United States struck at Syrian positions in central Lebanon in December.

  These retaliations failed to have any effect. The position there continued to deteriorate. The real question was no longer whether there should be a withdrawal but how to effect one. In February 1984 the Lebanese Army lost control of West Beirut and the Lebanese Government collapsed. The time had clearly come to get out and a firm joint decision with the United States and other members of the MNF was accordingly made to do so. I left it to the British commander on the ground to make the final decision as to what time of the day to move. He decided that it should be done by night. But I suddenly learned that President Reagan would be making a broadcast that evening to tell the American people what would be happening and why. Obviously it became necessary to alert our men to be ready to move as soon as they could. Then, at the last minute, while I was at Buckingham Palace for an Audience with the Queen, I received a message that the President was reconsidering the decision and would not after all broadcast. As it turned out the postponement decision promptly leaked and the President had to make his broadcast in any case. Clearly, we could not carry on like this, putting the safety of British troops at risk: so I refused to countermand the planned withdrawal of our men to British naval vessels lying offshore, which was duly effected with the British Army’s usual professionalism. In fact, all the MNF forces were shortly withdrawn to ships away from the perils they would have faced on shore. Nothing could now be done to save the Lebanon; the reconstituted Lebanese Government increasingly fell under the control of a Syria whose hostility to the West was now reinforced; and in March the MNF force returned home.

  The American intervention in the Lebanon – well intentioned as it was – was clearly a failure. It seemed to me that what happened there contained important lessons which we should heed. First, it is unwise to intervene in such situations unless you have a clear, agreed objective and are prepared and able to commit the means to secure it. Second, there is no point in indulging in retaliatory action which changes nothing on the ground. Third, one must avoid taking on a major regional power, like Syria, unless one is prepared to face up to the full consequences of doing so.

  By contrast, American intervention in Grenada was, in fact, a success. Democracy was restored, to the advantage not only of the islanders but also of their neighbours who could look forward to a more secure and prosperous future. Yet even governments acting on the best of motives are wise to respect legal forms. Above all, democracies have to show their superiority to totalitarian governments which know no law. Admittedly, the law on these matters is by no means clear, as was confirmed for me during a seminar I held after the Grenada affair to consider the legal basis for military intervention in another country. Indeed, to my surprise, I found that the lawyers at the seminar were more inclined to argue on grounds of realpolitik and the politicians were more concerned with the issue of legitimacy. My own instinct was – and is – always to found military action on the right of self-defence, which ultimately no outside body has the authority to question.

  Grenada was still very much on my mind when I went to Bonn for one of my regular Anglo-German summits with Chancellor Kohl on Tuesday 8 November.* Like me, Chancellor Kohl was worried about the impact of the American action on European public opinion in the run-up to the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles later that month.

  The main purpose of my visit, however, was to seek German support for the line I would take at the European Council in Athens, just a few weeks away. I began by making what I hoped would be the welcome suggestion that the next President of the European Commission should come from Germany, if the German Government wished to put forward a candidate. It appeared that they did not. Chancellor Kohl said that he agreed with me that the Commission was too big and tended to create unnecessary work. Then a little more diplomacy: I said that our aim was to build on the excellent foundation laid under the German presidency. After this we got down to business. I stressed the need for firm control of spending on the CAP if there was to be anything left of the Community’s ‘own resources’ for other purposes, such as the development of the electronics industry, which the Germans wanted. I also warned against allowing protectionism to create another area of disagreement with the United States. The Germans were most interested in the future level of MCAs,† which affected German farmers’ incomes, and the steel industry where they considered that they were receiving a raw deal and that the Italians were
using subsidies to undercut German producers. I hoped that at the end of this discussion each side had understood the areas on which we would stand firm and those where compromise was possible. In particular, I hoped that the Germans realized how serious I was about achieving my objectives on the budget question at Athens.

  The Community heads of government met in the magnificent Zappeion Hall, a classical Greek building adapted to the needs of a modern conference centre. At the first sessions of the Council that afternoon I was sitting opposite President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl. I noticed that whereas my own table was covered with piles of heavily annotated briefing on different complex agricultural and financial issues, no such encumbrance appeared in front of my French and German counterparts. This doubtless made for an impression of appropriately Olympian detachment, but it also suggested that they had not mastered the detail. And this turned out to be the case. Throughout the meeting Chancellor Kohl seemed unwilling or unable to make much effective contribution. Worse, President Mitterrand appeared not only badly briefed on the issues but strangely – I think genuinely – misinformed about his own Government’s position.

  The Greek presidency did not assist much either. Mr Papandreou always proved remarkably effective in gaining Community subsidies for Greece but he was less skilful in his present role as President of the European Council.

  On Tuesday I had a working breakfast with President Mitterrand. We were so far apart that there was no point in spending much time discussing Community issues at all and we largely concentrated on the Lebanon. The French President said jokingly that unless we demonstrated that discussions between Britain and France were continuing, the press would soon be talking about a return to the Hundred Years’ War. So in what I hoped was a suitably non-belligerent way I told him how his attitude at the Council had taken me by surprise, given the fact that I was going along with the proposals on the budget which the French Finance minister, M. Jacques Delors, had been advancing. The President asked me precisely what I meant and I explained. But I received no very satisfactory or clear response.

  Where we did see eye to eye – at least in private – was about Germany. I said that even though the Germans were willing to be generous because they received other political benefits from the Community, a new generation of Germans might arise who would refuse to make such a large contribution. This would risk a revival of German neutralism – a temptation which, as President Mitterrand rightly said, was already present.

  The meeting had been an amicable one and I tried to keep the atmosphere relatively friendly after the Council broke up, as in press interviews I avoided being too harsh about France’s performance. After all, M. Mitterrand was to be the next President of the Council and so it would fall to him to chair the crucial meetings as we at last approached the time when the Community’s money ran out. It did cross my mind that he might have wished to delay a settlement until he could take credit for it in his own presidency.

  * Helmut Kohl had succeeded Helmut Schmidt as West German Chancellor in 1982.

  † Monetary Compensatory Amounts (MCAs) were a system of border taxes and levies on CAP products.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mr Scargill’s Insurrection

  The background to and course of the year-long miners’ strike of 1984–1985

  THE 1983 GENERAL ELECTION RESULT was the single most devastating defeat ever inflicted upon democratic socialism in Britain. But there was also undemocratic socialism, and it too would need to be beaten. I had never had any doubt about the true aim of the hard Left: they were revolutionaries who sought to impose a Marxist system on Britain whatever the means and whatever the cost. For them, the institutions of democracy were no more than tiresome obstacles on the long march to a Marxist Utopia. While the electoral battle was still being fought their hands had been tied by the need to woo more moderate opinion, but in the aftermath of defeat they were free from constraint and thirsting for battle.

  The hard Left’s power was entrenched in three institutions: the Labour Party, local government and the trade unions. Predictably, it was the National Union of Mineworkers, led by its Marxist president, Arthur Scargill, who were destined to provide the shock troops for the Left’s attack. Within a month of the 1983 election Mr Scargill was saying openly that he did not ‘accept that we are landed for the next four years with this Government’. And this would be an attack directed not only against the Government, but against anyone and anything standing in the way of the Left, including fellow miners and their families, the police, the courts, the rule of law and Parliament itself.

  From the time of Mr Scargill’s election to the leadership of the NUM in 1981 I knew we would have to face another miners’ strike. The National Coal Board, the Government and the great majority of miners wanted a thriving, successful, competitive coal industry. But coal mining in Britain had become an industry where reason simply did not apply. Britain’s industrial revolution was to a large extent based on the easy availability of coal. At the industry’s height on the eve of the First World War it employed more than a million men to work over 3,000 mines. Production was 292 million tons. Thereafter decline was continuous, and relations between miners and owners frequently bitter. Conflict in the coal industry precipitated Britain’s only general strike in 1926. (Prefiguring later developments, the miners’ union split during the year-long coal strike that followed the general strike, and a separate union was set up in Nottinghamshire.) Successive governments found themselves dragged ever deeper into the task of rationalizing and regulating the industry, and in 1946 the post-war Labour Government finally nationalized it outright. By that time production was down to 187 million tons at 980 pits, with a workforce of just over 700,000.

  Government now began setting targets for coal production and investment in a series of documents inaugurated by the ‘Plan for Coal’ in 1950. These consistently overestimated both the demand for coal and the prospects for improvements in productivity within the industry. The only targets that were met were those for investment. Public money was poured in, but two problems proved insoluble: overcapacity and union resistance to the closure of uneconomic pits.

  By the 1970s the coal mining industry had come to symbolize everything that was wrong with Britain. In February 1972 mass pickets led by Arthur Scargill forced the closure of the Saltley Coke Depot in Birmingham by sheer weight of numbers. It was a frightening demonstration of the impotence of the police in the face of such disorder. The fall of Ted Heath’s Government after the 1973–74 miners’ strike lent substance to the myth that the NUM had the power to make or break British Governments, or at the very least the power to veto any policy threatening their interests by preventing coal getting to the power stations.

  I have already described the threat of a miners’ strike which we faced in February 1981. From then on it was really only a question of time. Would we be sufficiently prepared to win the fight when the inevitable challenge came?

  It fell mainly to Nigel Lawson who became Secretary of State for Energy in September 1981 to build up – steadily and unprovocatively – the stocks of coal which would allow the country to endure a coal strike. To maximize endurance it was vital that coal stocks be in place at the power stations and not at the pit heads, from which miners’ pickets could make movement impossible. But coal stocks were not the only element determining power station endurance. Some Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) power stations were oil fired. Ordinarily they were used only part of the time, to meet peak demand, but if needed they could be run continuously to help meet the ‘base load’ – that element of electricity demand that is more or less constant. ‘Oilburn’ was expensive, but would add significantly to the system’s ability to withstand a strike. Nuclear-powered stations, providing about 14 per cent of supply, were mostly some distance away from the coalfields and their primary fuel supply was also secure. Over the next few years more Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs) would be coming on stream and would steadily reduce our dependenc
e on coal-fired power. We were still building a cross-Channel link which would allow us to buy power from France, though we already had a link in operation between the English and Scottish systems. We also did our best to encourage industry to hold more stocks.

  Danger began to loom in the autumn of 1983. Peter Walker was now Secretary of State for Energy. As he had shown at Agriculture in our first Parliament, he was a tough negotiator. He was also a skilled communicator, something which I knew would be important if we were to retain public support in the coal strike which the militants would some day force upon us. Unfortunately, Peter Walker never really got on with Ian MacGregor, and this sometimes created tensions.

  Ian MacGregor took over as Chairman of the NCB on 1 September. He had been an excellent Chairman of the British Steel Corporation, turning the Corporation around after the damaging three-month steel strike in 1980. Unlike the militant miners’ leaders, Ian MacGregor genuinely wanted to see a thriving coal industry making good use of investment, technology and human resources. Perhaps his greatest quality was courage. Within the NCB itself he often found himself surrounded by people who had made their careers in an atmosphere of appeasement and collaboration with the NUM and who greatly resented the changed atmosphere he brought with him. Yet it transpired that Ian MacGregor was strangely lacking in guile. He was quite used to dealing with financial difficulties and hard bargaining. But he had no experience of dealing with trade union leaders intent on using the process of negotiation to score political points. Time and again he and his colleagues were outmanoeuvred by Arthur Scargill and the NUM leadership.

  On Friday 21 October 1983 an NUM delegate conference voted for a ban on overtime in protest at the Board’s 5.2 per cent pay offer and at prospective pit closures. In itself, an overtime ban was unlikely to have much effect. It probably had an ulterior purpose: to increase tension among the miners and so make them more prepared for a strike when the NUM leadership thought that one could successfully be engineered. We always knew that it was pit closures that were more likely to ignite a strike than a dispute about pay. The case for closures on economic grounds remained overwhelming. Even Labour had acknowledged it: thirty-two pits had been closed under the Labour Government between 1974 and 1979. Mr Scargill’s line was that no pit should be closed unless it was physically exhausted. In his view a pit that made a loss – and there were many – simply required further investment. Called to give evidence before a Select Committee, he had been asked whether there was any level of loss that he would deem intolerable. He replied memorably: ‘As far as I am concerned, the loss is without limit.’